A Strategic Guide for Building Effective Teams

“Good teams incorporate teamwork into their culture, creating the building blocks for success.” — Ted Sundquist, American football player.

Why Should you Read this Article?

Reading this article will take about 6 minutes. As a CEO/Founder, Head of HR, Head of L&D or a manager leading a team, you want your teams to be effective.

This article explores seven strategies for building effective teams and why they work!

If you decide to read this and if this makes sense, share it with others.

Enjoy!

In response to globalisation, rapid changes in external environments, and a desire by organisations to remain competitive, organisations have continued to flatten, decentralise, re-engineer their business processes, downsize, and empower their employees. Managers increasingly turn to team structures to facilitate these changes and gain a competitive edge.?

The actual team design used to support organisational goals may include cross-functional teams, functional work teams, project teams, self-managed teams, intact work teams, employee participation teams, problem-solving teams, maintenance or support teams, and management teams.?

Cohen and Baily indicate that in the United States, 82 per cent of companies employing more than 100 employees have used groups to support organisational goals. We must therefore draw the conclusion that "European and North American employees often do not work in isolation from each other but work in team.”

And that is true globally. Our organisations work better when our teams are productive and effective.

Unfortunately, the typical team-building effort proves ineffective for three reasons.

• First, it relies on the services of an external consultant, who is often unfamiliar with the particular characteristics of the business, the organisation, and its people.?
• Second, it involves off-site activities in artificial settings that fail to reflect actual work-site conditions adequately and therefore make transfer difficult.?
• Third, it fails to plan for, monitor, and assess the transfer of team-building activities to the work environment.

The principal reason for the ineffectual outcomes of many team-building activities is the failure to use a critical team-building resource readily available in organisations — the manager.

Managers are critical in maintaining a team climate through their day-to-day activities. For us, team building must be an ongoing activity internal to the organisation. As such, it should be made one of the manager's primary responsibilities instead of the responsibility of an external team-building consultant or third party within the organisation.

Seven strategies for building an effective team:

1. Establish Team Values and Goals: Define the team's purpose and set clear, measurable objectives.

2. Evaluate Team Performance: Continuously evaluate team performance and make adjustments as needed to ensure effectiveness.

3. Foster Open Communication: Encourage open and accurate communication among team members and with the larger organisation.

4. Build Interpersonal Relationships Based on Trust and Respect: Cultivate an environment of trust, respect, honesty, and acceptance among team members.

5. Encourage Shared Leadership: Empower team members to make decisions and contribute to the team's success.

6. Select Members with Complementary Skills: Build a team with members who have diverse skills, abilities, and viewpoints.

7. Continuously Evaluate and Adjust: Regularly evaluate team dynamics and make necessary adjustments to ensure effectiveness.

Following these steps can help managers build and maintain effective teams.?

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” - Babe Ruth

The benefits of following the seven-step process for building an effective team

Following the seven-step process for building effective teams offers several benefits. Research and resources highlight the advantages of this approach, including the following:

1. Clear Guidance for Managers: The seven-step process provides a clear framework to guide managers in their team-building efforts.

2. High-Performing Teams: By following these steps, managers can build high-performing teams that are goal-oriented, motivated, and focused on achieving extraordinary results.

3. Long-Term Success: The process helps create and maintain a dream team to accelerate and achieve business goals, as well as future-proofing the business by learning how to maintain a high-performing team.

4. Decision Strategies: The model presented in the seven-step process offers decision strategies for the selection and sequencing of team-building efforts and interventions.

In summary, the seven-step process for building effective teams provides clear guidance for managers, helps create high-performing teams, and offers decision strategies for long-term success.

If you want our support in helping your manager become better at building effective teams and becoming better leaders for the world, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected] .

I look forward to the challenge and the fruitful outcomes we can build together.